College Football Rankings: Alabama Rises To No. 1 In Week 3 BlogPoll

One week after elevating LSU to the No. 1 ranking for its season-opening win over Oregon, the BlogPoll is once more rolling with Alabama at its top team. The Tide, who were also the preseason BlogPoll No. 1, picked up fewer first-place votes than LSU, but had a strong enough consensus at the top to get past the Tigers and claim pole position in the Week 3 BlogPoll. Oklahoma, No. 1 in the AP Poll and USA Today coaches poll this week, takes a lower perch in this realm of the college football rankings, settling for No. 3.

Wack Ballot Watchdog

Someone ranked Iowa 13th, two spots ahead of Pitt. (Iowa State, which beat Iowa in triple overtime on Saturday, got ranked at 22nd and 25th.)

The MGoBlog ballot isn’t “wack,” per se, but keeping Stanford No. 1 after the Cardinal took a while to put away Duke but dinging Ohio State, Virginia Tech, and others for “shaky performances against mediocre competition” while Alabama added a road win over a ranked team? Brian Cook’s the lone believer in the Cardinal as the nation’s top team.

Now on to the extracurriculars. First up are the teams which spur the most and least disagreement between voters as measured by standard deviation. Note that the standard deviation charts halt at No. 25 when looking for the lowest, otherwise teams that everyone agreed were terrible (say, Akron) would all be at the top.

Again, I am unsurprised that there is a lack of consensus on those two teams at the top. A depleted Oregon squad fumbled itself into oblivion against LSU, then carpet-bombed Nevada; Florida’s defense has given up three points in two games, but its opponents literally haven’t scored on any other team, either.

Ballot Math

First up are Mr. Bold and Mr. Numb Existence. The former goes to the voter with the ballot most divergent from the poll at large. The number you see is the average difference between a person’s opinion of a team and the poll’s opinion.

Resume balloting strikes again! BHGP slots Florida State No. 1 and Florida No. 2, then gets really crazy with Illinois at No. 4, while Frogs O’ War’s ballot has Michigan No. 4 and Florida International No. 14.

Toe that party line, Addicted to Quack. You don’t know the powers the BlogPoll has over Mike Pereira.

Next we have the Coulter/Kos Award and the Straight Bangin’ Award, which are again different sides of the same coin. The CKA and SBA go to the blogs with the highest and lowest bias rating, respectively. Bias rating is calculated by subtracting the blogger’s vote for his own team from the poll-wide average. A high number indicates you are shameless homer. A low number indicates that you suffer from an abusive relationship with your football team.

It’s pretty impressive that ATQ can have both the most central ballot and one that may overrate Oregon, but the Ducks are only No. 9 and actually dropped a spot in ATQ’s rankings, so this isn’t the world’s worst Coulter/Kos win. And my own personal ballot has Oregon eighth, so I don’t necessarily think they’re wrong about the Ducks.

Also: HI OHIO STATE BLOG.

The Key Play dropped his Hokies four spots after a close call against East Carolina this week. But he also tweets in all caps during football season, so I think that sort of instability makes some sense.

Swing is the total change in each ballot from last week to this week (obviously voters who didn’t submit a ballot last week are not included). A high number means you are easily distracted by shiny things. A low number means that you’re damn sure you’re right no matter what reality says.

Do you need me to explain resume balloting to you again?

It’s impressive to keep a Swing under 40 or so, especially this early in the season. Fantasy College Blitz did it by moving a total of 10 teams and making no adjustments to 18 positions on its ballot.